An unexplicable disaster seems to have occured.
The pond has been filling up all week with an excess of duck weed and that nasty fibrous stuff again.
Yesterday I carried out a cleaning operation and shifted a lot of the stuff, I didn’t think about it much at the time, but noticed a lack of tadpoles, though I rescued some out of the weed, I assumed they were all hiding.
I also found a frog living in there, he has been lurking all week.
This morning there’s not a single tadpole to be seen, considering that last weekend the pond was full of them, I can’t see a single one.
I know that I’ve got small fish and a lot of dragonfly larvae in there, but I can’t see them getting through several hundred large tadpoles.
It’s unlikely that the birds would be able to pick them off as the pond is too deep.
My only assumption is that Mr Frog is cannabalistic and has been having a good feed all week, little sod will find himself in the river when I catch him.
I reckon he may have eaten the fish too.
The ways of nature are too complex for me.
On a happy note, the cooking oil seems to have done the trick and the scumbags have dissapeared, lets hope they OD and fall in the river.
Despite the rain, wonderful selection of birds down the garden, Scooby Doo the Jack Russell is lying on an old blanket as I write, watching them with fascination, I have the patio doors open and a lovely thrush is hopping about in front of his nose, he don’t care.
The reed buntings only appear early in the morning, they are really cute, at the moment there is a spotted flycatcher lurking about, he’s on the garage roof at the moment.
Ok thats all folks, have to go to Sainsbury’s now to get my tea, madam is off to see her famous but infamous cousin, but thats another story.

Well, I would have been well into my polish sausage and Bud breakfast by now, we always tried to get in by 8:00 on a saturday morning.
My brother used to leave Nottingham early in the morning and we would meet up at Shippea Hill station, sometimes leaving one of the cars there.
One year he was a bit late and it was a very full airshow, I think it was the one featuring the Czech Hinds. Anyway, he followed me in, but as I went through the gate, he was waved to a halt and told, that was it, the place is full and they started shutting the gate. I stopped and explained he situation and the good old Yanks bent over backwards to help us out and ensure that we were parked together, next to the fuel tanks, I recall. I can’t imagine British jobsworths being so helpfull.
One year during the chaos of arrival, we came across the base commander in tea shirt and shorts out for a jog with his sweating entourage.
A British policeman was being obnoxious and unhelpfull to people trying to park, he ran straight over to him and went mental, ‘This is my base and people should be treated with respect at all times, now get the hell out of here’, one red faced copper slinks off into the crowd.
I think that in the early days, before cheap flights to the US and package holidays in Florida, it was our one chance of experiencing what our transatlantic cousins were all about, once through that gate it didn’t feel that you were in the UK anymore.
This was particularly evident on a saturday evening, when most of the crowds had gone, and they went through that ritual of towing the B-52 backwards onto the area normally reserved for the vintage stuff, why they did this was always beyond me.
However we used to hang about and get talking to the ground crews and even the B-52 aircrew, the rest of the airfield would be a hive of activity as they dampened down the barbies and cleaned up ready for the next day.
We were never rushed off the site and enjoyed their company, not only that, but, with a bit of persuasion, some of them were prepared to let you have Buds with the lid on to take home.
They were always so polite and helpful at all times, I remember at the last show, we got caught out in a terrific downpour and the aircrew of a Jolly Green Giant helicopter gunship invited us in out of the rain, unfortunately, the thing leaked like a sieve, I couldn’t believe it and mentioned that I thought that US technology would be able to deal with this, the laconic reply was, ‘Well we’re nice and dry in the pilots seat, but we can’t let you in there as it’s classified and we’ll have to shoot you’.
Great days.
The first time my missus ever went to an airshow was when we first met, 1997, what an event that was, Reds, Thunderbirds, Frecces, Patrouiles de France, Patrouiles de Suisse, Turks, B-2, F-117, fantastic weather too, must have been the USAF 50th anniversary, one of the best airshows ever.
I have all the shows on video from 91 onwards, unfortunately my poxy new digi cam won’t play them, so I can’t go down memory lane today.
At least my misuss makes fantastic burgers, but even they aren’t the same.